Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
and clothe 155 people. More than 40 percent of the corn grown in the world is produced in
the United States.
Every industry in the food system is impacted in some way by production agriculture.
And like the food and input supply sectors, the production agriculture sector has been under-
going profound change in response to a variety of market forces. In this section, we will
explore the dynamic production agriculture sector of our food production and marketing
system.
Farm demographics
So what is a farm? The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) defi nes a
farm as “any establishment from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were
sold or would normally be sold during the year” (Ahearn and Weber 2010). This
defi nition includes many part-time farmers with limited acreage and very modest
production. The USDA defi nition of a farm includes the small hobby farmer that sells
one horse or ten lambs per year as well as the commercial operator that farms 8,000 acres
or produces 700,000 head of hogs annually. The defi nition includes those who farm
part-time and those who have farmed full-time for generations. The Economic Research
Service (ERS) of the USDA classifi es farms into three groups: rural residence farms,
intermediate farms, and commercial farms. Rural residence farms include limited resource,
retirement, and residential/lifestyle farms. Intermediate farms include operators reporting
farming as the major occupation and gross sales under $250,000, while commercial farms
are family farms with income over $250,000 or non-family farms (Ahearn and
Weber 2010 ).
The makeup of the farms varies widely, depending upon the farm typology. Most farms
(71 percent) are classifi ed as rural residence farms, yet they produce only 6.7 percent of the
market value of farm products ( Table 1.5) . The rural residence farms are roughly a quarter
section of land, with operators 58 years old. Intermediate farms make up 16 percent of all
farms, producing 8 percent of farm production, while commercial farms produce 86 percent
Table 1.5 Farm characteristics, by type of farm, 2007
Type of Farm
Number
of farms
% of
Farms
Average
Acres
% Market
Value of
Farm
Products
% of
Government
Payments
Average
Age
Rural residence
1,566,774
71.1
162
6.7
25.3
58.2
Intermediate
359,025
16.3
533
7.8
18.2
54.3
Commercial
278,993
12.7
1,712
85.5
56.6
54.5
Total
2,204,792
100.0
418
100.0
100.0
57.1
Source: 2007 Census of Agriculture.
 
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